ORIGINATING
SIN HALTED
HIS VICTORY OVER THE POSSIBILITY OF ORIGINATING EVIL is suggested
by the first statement, “I beheld the
Lord always before My face." Jesus was, in some respects, an entirely
new creation. He indeed stood in the same relation to God as that occupied by
the angels, who were created prior to man. In emptying Himself of the form of
God, it is first stated that He took upon Him the form of a Servant. That is a
fact even deeper than that He was made in the likeness of men. In this stoop of
the Eternal Son, He passed, as has been seen in a previous article, from the
place of Sovereignty to the place of submission. In that very fact, there is the
possibility of a new beginning of sin. The fall of Satan can only be
comprehended by recognizing that as to his original creation he was made a
servant of God. All the POWERS OF HIS BEING were to act under the direction of
the Eternal. There was to be no choice of the WILL except under the guiding
principle of the will of God. He was created with his face towards God and the
secret of his fulfillment of the highest possibilities of his marvelous being
lie in his setting the Lord always before his face. His fall consisted in the fact, to continue
the figure, that he set before his face another purpose, another reason, and
thus turned his back upon Jehovah. The new Servant of God in all the
facts of His being was able to say, “I
have set Jehovah always before My face." When divesting Himself of the
form of Deity, He took the form of a Servant, and entered upon the life of
SUBJECTIVITY. He
stood in a place where it was within the possibility of His nature to act apart
from the governmental direction of Jehovah. This He never did. Jude
the apostle declares in what lay the sin of the angels. “Angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper
habitation." (Jude 6) Sin
was abounding with all the created creatures, except the animals. Let it be carefully
noted that their leaving their proper habitation was not the punishment of
their sin, but the sin itself. They refused to remain in the habitation marked
out for them by the law of God. The punishment of their sin lies in its
sequence, that they are cast forth from their habitation by their own act; they
are reserved in the bonds or limitations of their false position “under darkness unto the judgment of the
great day." Their own PRINCIPALITY, that is, the realm over which God
had intended them to rule, they did not keep, because they left their
habitation. They
turned their back upon Jehovah. Here, so far as has been revealed,
is the primal origin of sin in the universe of God. Instead of exercising the
magnificent endowment of WILL under the governing principle of the will of God,
they exercised it under another domination, that namely of their own desire,
and then turning their backs upon God they left their proper habitation, their
first habitation.
Herein by contrast is manifested the first fact in the
marvelous victory of Jesus. He, the new
Servant of God kept His principality by abiding in His true habitation. He
never exercised will under the constraint of desire, but always setting Jehovah
before His face, He lived in unceasing and glad response to all the volition
of that will of infinite wisdom, of perfect holiness, and unfathomable love. The first phase
of the victory of Jesus was therefore that of victory over the possibility of
sinning, by the prostitution of will power, without suggestion made from
without.
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